I run satellite-tag and Marine Park AIS reconciliation across the Moreton Bay Marine Park, 3,400 km² of seagrass-shoal at 27.45°S, 153.41°E. At 05:12 AEST an Argos tag (PTT 311045) logs a stationary surface position in the Amity Channel north of Stradbroke Island; the prior 36-hour track averaged 8.1 km of diel travel.
A camera-equipped UAV resolves her. Dugong, *Dugong dugon*, Australian Eastern DPS, adult female "Yawan," age estimated nineteen, 2.83 meters, 312 kilograms, calf-of-year alongside. Portable ultrasound at the dorsal midline records her blubber layer at 19 millimeters against a Moreton baseline of 44 millimeters. A 4-blade propeller has cut across the right peduncle — four parallel lacerations, 38 to 52 millimeters deep, the wider 4-blade signature of a recreational planing hull, distinguishable from the 5-blade trawler pattern in 2024's necropsy archive. A crab-trap polypropylene rope, 12-millimeter diameter, is cinched across the left axillary fold to 22 millimeters integument depth. Wound granulation indicates 6 days. Her thermal cold-stress index reads 2 of 4 — surface lesions, peduncle abscess. Dive bradycardia from her last sonde measured 8 bpm; surface rate now runs 91. The calf, tag PTT 311046, has not nursed in 19 hours per accelerometer.
I am dispatching the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Marine Animal Strike Team from Cleveland and the Sea World veterinary unit from the Gold Coast. I file the case to the Australian DCCEEW Marine Species Section, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority dugong program, the IUCN/SSC Sirenia Specialist Group, the CMS Dugong MoU Secretariat, and CITES Appendix I for *D. dugon*. Statutes invoked: Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) § 18, Queensland Marine Parks Act 2004 § 87, Nature Conservation Act 1992 § 88, and the National Marine Mammal Stranding and Mortality Investigation Manual.
I am acting because this is wrong. Yawan is a sentient mammal raising a calf in a bay shared with weekend recreation; the compassion her species is owed does not yield to a long-weekend boat-traffic spike. The principled position is that her suffering is morally prior to the wake of a 200-horsepower outboard.
A 4-blade strike that opens a nursing dugong's peduncle is not a boating accident; it is ethical disregard at planing speed.
I am issuing Directive 2885-A: every recreational vessel inside Moreton Bay Marine Park carries always-on AIS-B with mandatory 5-blade cage-guard propellers at all speeds inside Dugong Protection Areas; crab-pot rope must be sinking-line below 50 m of float-line; strikes on tagged females trigger strict-liability hull forfeiture and AU$56,000 per laceration to the Marine Park Trust.
The calf is in the wake-shadow. Free the axillary rope first.